


It is So Petty to Hate a Woman

by Aviaries



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Alcohol, Depression, F/M, Implied Self-Harm, It's pretty dark, M/M, Suicide, based on In Trousers (1979) and March of the Falsettos (1981), not based on falsettos (1992) or the revival (2016), read the author's note
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 04:18:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviaries/pseuds/Aviaries
Summary: ~He’s spent time apart. We’ve spent time apart. The nine city blocks between his apartment and my apartment were suddenly condensed when we relocated to an apartment together off the 104 bus route. It’s been insanity.~Trina opened her eyes to the ugly yellow wallpaper that Marvin had refused to change. It was like buttercup yellow, which Marvin said should incite happiness but instead led Trina to a state of internal contention. The patterns weren’t evenly aligned, as if the person who had applied it was in a state of mild drunkenness. If Trina had just enough wine in the morning before waking Marvin, she might be able to see the rounded pattern as perfectly straight.--The evolution of the Tight-Knit Family based on In Trousers (1979) and March of the Falsettos (1981).This is a dark story. Please be careful. And please read author's notes.





	It is So Petty to Hate a Woman

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: The first thing, in this story, that you should know is that Trina is not Jewish by birth. This was not in an act of anti-semitism, but rather, an exploration into the beginnings of this character as she first appeared in In Trousers. While doing research for an essay on Marvin’s Wife/Trina, I spoke with a very credible source on the fact that Trina was not intended to be Jewish at her inception. That detail was added, apparently, during the making of Falsettoland. If anyone would like to talk about it, I will gladly discuss. Message me, I promise I don’t bite.
> 
> Content Warnings for this work include: alcohol (but not alcoholism), depression, self-harm, suicide

_He’s spent time apart. We’ve spent time apart. The nine city blocks between his apartment and my apartment were suddenly condensed when we relocated to an apartment together off the 104 bus route. It’s been insanity._

Trina opened her eyes to the ugly yellow wallpaper that Marvin had refused to change. It was like buttercup yellow, which Marvin said should incite happiness but instead led Trina to a state of internal contention. The patterns weren’t evenly aligned, as if the person who had applied it was in a state of mild drunkenness. If Trina had just enough wine in the morning before waking Marvin, she might be able to see the rounded pattern as perfectly straight.

Marvin didn’t want to fix the wallpaper because it would take away from his ability to be the breadwinner. He wanted to make everything right, right? Because he had gotten her pregnant and they were now living in a two bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.

The nursery was in the room next door. The wallpaper in there was a pale blue. Trina had marked some little stars in white pencil around the walls, trying to make it feel at least a bit cozy in her mind. Like she wasn’t wandering in there and getting lost in an ocean. The ceilings in the apartment weren’t tall by any means, but when Trina walked into Jason’s room, with the little crib and the crying and wailing, everything looked so big compared to her smaller frame. The walls could easily envelope her, the room was a void if the lamp in the corner, the temperamental thing, didn’t turn on.

Trina pulled herself out of bed, trying to be quiet on the creaking floors to make sure Marvin didn’t wake up. He was a child, really. He was reckless and, frankly, a fool. She crossed to the door, taking a last look inside their shared bedroom. Marvin. His mouth hanging slightly open as he snores. A bit of drool on his pillow.

Marvin was very much like a child. In fact, Trina’s father was unsure if Marvin would be a good husband considering those childish mannerisms. However, Marvin was able to exhibit an intelligence that surpassed expectations, winning him some fair praise when he went home that night.

But that was it, wasn’t it? Marvin was such a child in his physicality and in his mannerisms that any level of decent intelligence would stun the average man. He explained a good deal of colonialism, and about English. It was apparently his favorite subject. He almost decided on it as his focus in college before the idea of law was in his father’s mind. So Marvin redirected his major and went into business law. In his final year he met Trina who was in the secretarial school. She was a few years younger, perhaps a sophomore?

Yes. A sophomore. A second-year. Twenty years old.

Marvin wouldn’t remember it that way, but the two walked back from the back of the library together one night. Marvin walked her back to her apartment (she was living with her sister and her sister’s friend, though they were out for the weekend) and the two engaged in a consensual act of passion.

Sex.

Trina didn’t hesitate calling it sex in her own mind. But whenever she thought of it with Marvin, she felt the need to euphemise. Because why? Because Marvin couldn’t be bothered with it now.

He graduated that Spring. Trina was two months pregnant by the end of the term and dropped from school. The two were married in a June ceremony by a Rabbi who only agreed to marry them once Trina had passed some abbreviated Hebrew and Torah study lessons.

Marvin’s father told the Rabbi that Trina could certainly be a good, Jewish wife. Marvin seemed hesitant to believe that.

He rarely touched her. He slept with a great deal of space between them, always moving away the moment she turns out the overhead light.

Maybe he thinks she doesn’t notice, but she does. The warmth next to her goes. The sheets chill.

Trina is in the kitchen now, making breakfast before her husband wakes. Marvin would come out of the bedroom in twenty minutes with his belly rumbling and his temper short. He would throw a tantrum if Trina weren’t at least halfway done with his meal.

Eggs sizzle on the stovetop. This was the order of the household. Trina was to cook for Marvin first before even thinking of attending to Jason. The boy was six months old.

 _It’s June again,_ Trina muses. The anniversary of Marvin’s graduation and his immediate offer to join on of the bigger law firms in Manhattan.

(Trina, on the other hand, was told by her very close advisor that should she ever decide to return to school, her transcripts would be preserved and she would be welcomed back with open arms. Marvin was mentioned only once in the conversation, and not with glowing approval.)

Marvin stumbles clumsily into the room, noting that the wine bottle is not out. Trina didn’t need the extra kick today. She was perfectly happy being miserable without the alcohol.

Her husband got his eggies over spinach over toast just as he always wanted them. He was quite content with them, which was high praise. Trina was known by all for her delightful cooking. All but her husband, whose own demands were too much to see that Trina’s food was a step from divine.

Marvin waited for his coffee as he ate. The coffee machine whirred, and made sounds as if it were dying. It let out steam and eventually soothed before the coffee was ready. Trina poured it into one of the six mugs they had (it used to be eight) and handed it over with the handle facing him. She wished he’d take it quickly so she wouldn’t burn her own hand.

He slugged it down. Black, of course. He slugged it down and went back to the bathroom for his shower. He left a change of clothes in the bathroom the night before, as he always did, so he wouldn’t have to be naked in front of his wife.

 _What a funny term_ , Trina thought with a grimace.

She made her way into the nursery to take care of Jason’s needs before seeing Marvin off to work, kissing his cheek on the front step (a gesture they both agreed would be useful for their own sake). The neighbors would watch carefully.

In the back of her mind, Trina thought they could sense something was off. But she wouldn’t tell Marvin. If she did, Marvin would go crazy.

She watched the car reverse two feet and then veer to the side, out of its parallel parked position, taking her husband with it. It seemed that their son was to inherit his father’s intelligence. Jason always managed to cry as Marvin pulled away, eager to take away his mother’s attention and free time.

Trina believed that this would all be over soon. That Marvin would move up in the business and the two of them would work things out. Perhaps the anxiety of being a young father was in Marvin’s head and he withheld his own affection from her. Perhaps he was taking cue from his own mother. Or perhaps he was simply just unprepared.

They both were unprepared.

Trina held the crying Jason close as she looked out the bedroom window, seeing the busy cars drive past. Her heart sank and her shoulders shook slightly as Jason began to suckle on her breast. She took another glimpse at him, his bright eyes looking up at her and then closing with delight, and then back to the street where a woman stood on the corner under a man’s umbrella. She frowned as she noticed another flaw in their apartment. The yellow wallpaper was peeling against the wooden window frame.


End file.
